The actor has teamed up with Gemma Dunleavy for He Sits of a Tuesday, set in the working-class Dublin community where they grew up
Thommas Kane Byrne has always stood out in Dublin’s crowded performance scene, not only because of what he can do with his face and body – like a latter-day Michael Kidd, he makes whole narratives out of gestures – but also because of his careful use of the natural resource of his home turf. Raised in St Mary’s Mansions, on Seán MacDermott Street, he draws on the greater surroundings of the north inner city and on the buried tensions of his and his community’s identity.
He Sits of a Tuesday, a work in progress, follows six working-class women and a girl as they wait in a local politician’s office, all desperate for help. “I’ll be very careful not to mention the name of the person,” says Kane. Dunleavy laughs, then says, “Years ago, politicians would hold clinics in the area to help whoever needed it – say, if you needed a home or if there was a problem in your flat or if someone in your family had problems with drugs or whatever.
“So say if you had a problem, like you needed to get your child into rehab and you didn’t have the money, you’d go to whichever politician was holding these clinics. And this particular one was around on Tuesdays, so people would say to you, ‘He sits of a Tuesday,’ letting you know where you might find them. Because you wouldn’t really know where to get them – it was all word of mouth.”
It is typical of Kane Byrne, a writer with Roddy Doyle levels of observation, that this essentially tragic tale should be packed with moments of comedy and joy. It is also typical of Dunleavy’s music for difficult topics such as poverty, misogyny and violence to be packaged in beautiful and easily digestible form. In that way, He Sits of a Tuesday is more manifesto than narrative. “In this country you can’t discuss diversity without discussing class,” says Kane Byrne.
I’ve been very lucky to avoid, mostly, being a diversity hire in my industry. People have wanted me for me. And now we’re just trying to give that back to our communityWhy a story about just women? “Because I just feel like if there’s anything to be said by a man, it’s already been f**kin’ said, in every dialect, in every language, iambic pentameter to f**kin’ O’Casey, like,” says Kane Byrne, laughing.
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